Ms Tajima was born on August 4 1900 and became the oldest living person seven months ago.

An official in the town of Kikai, off Kyushu, Japan, said she died in hospital on Saturday shortly before 8pm, having been cared for there since January.

Ms Tajima was the last known person born in the 19th century, and raised seven sons and two daughters and reportedly had more than 160 descendants, including great-great-great grandchildren.

Her town of Kikai is a small island of about 7,000 people halfway between Okinawa and Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands.

Video on Japanese television showed Ms Tajima moving her hands to the beat of music played on traditional Japanese instruments at a ceremony to mark the achievement of her becoming the oldest person alive, after the death of Violet Brown in Jamaica.

The US-based Gerontology Research Group said that another Japanese woman, Chiyo Miyako, is now the world’s oldest person in its records.

Ms Miyako lives south of Tokyo in Kanagawa prefecture, and is due to turn 117 in 10 days.

Guinness World Records certified 112-year-old Masazo Nonaka of northern Japan as the world’s oldest man earlier this month, and was planning to recognise Ms Tajima as the world’s oldest person.